If you’re into the racing game scene, you’ll notice that Gran Turismo 7 is coming. If you’re particularly aware, you might have figured out that this is the series’ 25th anniversary year. What you might not have noticed is that there was another racing series that released a new edition a week ago to celebrate its 25th anniversary.
Unlike Gran Turismo 7, which has stuck to a successful formula and recognizable aesthetic throughout its 25 years, Grid Legends is barely recognisable as the sequel to the 1997 TOCA Touring Car Championship, the game at its roots. While describing it as a TOCA game is a bit like claiming that the newest Mercedes Formula 1 challenger is actually a silver Tyrrell, playing a race in the classic touring car class behind the wheel of a yellow and blue Renault Laguna, the spirit never fails. exist.
Describing EA Sportsified Grid Legends as the FIFA of a racing game would be a serious stretch, especially since it offers a vast space for an officially licensed tournament, but the game takes a similarly minimalist approach to racing. Its healthy selection of cars is subtly spread across multiple classes and disciplines, ensuring that there is almost always at least a few evenly matched but independent characters pitted against each other. Compared to 2019’s series reboot, there’s a lot of repetition, but the few additions are at least wilder and more professional than the game’s slightly more conservative platter.
Stadium Super Trucks pitch and bank corners on a blancmange-like suspension that requires unique cornering techniques, while the new electric race cars feature a Formula E-style boost zone that delivers thrust closer to hyperspace than horsepower. It’s all based on intuitive and realistic processing models, without being overly realistic. Each car handles exactly as you would imagine in an idle racer fantasy, not something as tedious as the laws of physics. It’s like they’re not consulting an engineer, they’re consulting an 11-year-old.
Obviously, despite the existence of real-world racing mechanics, this isn’t a simulation, but I happen to really like the Grid series’ brand of dramatic, dynamic arcade racing. Its delightful fallible AI easily throws it off the track accidentally under pressure, and the Nemesis system returns, ensuring that using the AI driver as a cornering aid has consequences. As for the aftermath, I mean finish the game with a car that looks like it was rejected as a prop in Mad Max: Fury Road because it looks so shabby.
Unfortunately, the repeated theme does apply to the track list as well as the cars. Of course, you’d expect many circuits from previous games to appear, but some of the “new” additions are recycled from earlier in the series’ history. For example, Chicago, Dubai, and Paris are shiny versi ons of the same locations we raced to death in the tortured, tense career mode of the original Grid sequel. The better news is that the real new locations, London, Moscow and a winding mountain road called Strada Alpina are all thoughtfully designed and cleverly laid out.
Grid Legends is also a very beautiful game, although it focuses on atmosphere rather than outright fidelity. Hurrying through densely decorated urban tracks during a hazy sunset has become a series icon, very evocative, with each location having its own strong, recognizable character.
The title feature of Grid Legends may be the story mode you’ll end up spending the least time with, a novel narrative offering that uses the same virtual scene technology that powers everyone’s favorite space nanny drama, The Mandalorian. Grid Legends puts real actors in a virtual paddock to create a fictional documentary series in a format that doesn’t borrow heavily from Netflix’s Formula 1: Drive To Survive, because it’s wholesale. It’s even called Driven To Glory, which sounds like someone rearranged the refrigerator poem a bit.
The interstitial cutscenes are sometimes corny, but the naturalistic quality of the writing and acting is actually more impressive than you’d normally expect from an FMV game, especially if you grew up in the 1990s. Sex-education’s Ncuti Gatwa was an amiable antagonist in the role of Valentin Manzi, and Natsumi Koroda’s role as Yume Tanaka was convincing, but the show was stolen by the effortlessly unpleasant antagonist Nathan McKane, actor Callum McGowen played the role perfectly.
Best of all, these cutscenes add significant context and continuity to every event you play, something that is often lacking in racing games. You’re constantly looking ahead to the next named character as you blaze a trail in the field, and you’ll celebrate that even more when you take action against pantomime villain Nathan McKane. What’s more, the events in the story feed directly into the Nemesis system, which means you’ll have to think more carefully about overtaking your competitors lest you get unceremoniously kicked into the nearest tire wall.
Story mode is so well executed that it makes – absolutely necessary – a separate career mode feel boring by comparison. While you’ll be done with the kitchen sink drama in a few hours, the real errands for unlocking the car take place in the longer but more traditional career mode. After the stifling soap opera of Driven to Glory, you can really feel the lack of continuity between events, but to its credit, career mode does offer satisfying progression and the freedom to jump between disciplines at will A thin line was drawn in between.
Once you’ve exhausted – no pun intended – careers, there is a very flexible “race creator” exhibit mode. This gives you full control over the game’s entire toolkit, allowing you to bundle various mismatched vehicles onto the track at the same time, add ramps and acceleration zones, and then set the whole thing up in a midnight thunderstorm. Single player games are fun, but definitely the gift of multiplayer fun.
It’s a racing game built on authenticity, but ultimately puts fun above everything else.
On its own, Grid Legends is a rich and varied package with a wealth of content and options. The problem is that returning players who have spun off the 2019 Grid reboot will have to scrutinize the list of cars and tracks and ask serious questions about whether there’s enough money here to justify another expense. For everyone else, it’s an arcade racing game with no egos. A racing game built on authenticity but ultimately putting fun above everything else.
Back in 1997, in the TOCA Touring Car Championship, Codemasters’ goal was to use the PlayStation’s relatively new 3D capabilities to try to reproduce motorsports as accurately and realistically as possible. What’s different about Grid Legends is that it doesn’t reflect what motorsport is, but what we all want it to be. That means solid exaggeration, spectacular racing cars, a variety of out-of-the-ordinary characters, and a complete absence of boring practical issues. In fact, you’ll never race between 1970s 1000-horsepower sports cars and ridiculously gigantic race cars, during nighttime, snow, fireworks and laser shows. What’s even more unfortunate is that…
